Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Monday, September 15, 2014
Our evenings are starting to get shorter, but we can still be outside playing after dinner so far. The kids took advantage of that and pulled out those scooters to ride along the sidewalk.
I love watching Eden and Rhys out there, finally able to master the skill of pushing off while standing on one leg. It isn't easy, you know! But hooray, they have it down pat now!
Eden decided to take her Scooter literally and sit on it and scoot down the sidewalk! She's so silly!
It wasn't easy, but she had fun!
After they were up and down the street a few times, the kids climbed into the back of our truck and pretended it was their hangout!
Hooray for summer nights!!!
I love watching Eden and Rhys out there, finally able to master the skill of pushing off while standing on one leg. It isn't easy, you know! But hooray, they have it down pat now!
(This little girl makes me laugh. I don't know why she was wearing fleece pants and a fleece sweater, it was very warm out this evening! But she dressed herself, and I wasn't going to fight with her over it!)
Eden decided to take her Scooter literally and sit on it and scoot down the sidewalk! She's so silly!
It wasn't easy, but she had fun!
After they were up and down the street a few times, the kids climbed into the back of our truck and pretended it was their hangout!
Hooray for summer nights!!!
What a day! My heart is overwhelmed with joy!
This morning was our Fall Kick Off at our church, Jericho Ridge, and we celebrated with a baby dedication, two baptisms and a bbq. It was awesome. The sun was blazing; it is was just a perfect day to share it with family and friends.
To top it off, my own Abi-girl shared a brief testimony at the end of the service, and then we went outside for a baptism. She spoke so clearly and confidently and I was so proud of her. She wasn't too sure what to say, or what words were the best, or how to explain something that she feels, but it came out great! Everyone's story is personal and none is ever wrong. (even if some of us feel it has to contain certain elements to be a proper testimony. I had to stop myself from adding information or pieces to her story as she worked on it, and kept reminding myself to encourage her to say the truth from the heart.) The power is in Him, and every "proper" testimony just needs to point back to who HE is to us and what HE has done. And she is able to share that.
She talked about how she grew up in a Christian home and school, attending church and hearing the stories of God and Jesus so much so that He became some sort of "celebrity" to her! That sounds different to me, to put it in those terms, but it makes sense in a world where people are elevated to celebrity status, and are "idols" and "liked" and where the goal of many youth today are to become that recognized as well. To say that Jesus became a "celebrity" would be to admit that He became someone to be looked up to, to be recognized, to be followed. A hero. And if she chooses Him to be the celebrity she looks up to, how wonderful!
She mentioned how she was wondering about His purpose for her life, and what direction to go in and feeling lost when she had an asthma attack a few years ago so severe that we needed to call 9-1-1 and where she stopped breathing. It was after she was healed that she knew that God must have a plan for her life!
After the service, we all filed outside to watch the two youth get baptized. (after we picked up our kids from the Kids at the Ridge, which is our Sunday School program. I was worried I'd be late to the baptism in having to go upstairs for the Youngers and then downstairs for B and then outside, but it worked out good! We made it in time!)
I was good listening to her testimony and didn't shed any tears, but listened in awe as she shared her story. It was after she came up out of that water that I cried. But that's okay. They were happy tears. It's good to cry at things like these!
My heart is so happy, so overwhelmed, so full of joy that she has chosen to be baptized and to set herself apart publicly.
I didn't get to affirm Abi publicly, but I did share this with her in a letter:
You have mentioned how you have been awed at the thought of God breathing life into dust to create man, and how the song "Late have I loved you" by Gungor has meant a lot to you. In 2 Corinthians 2:15, it says that "we are to God the aroma of Christ." Abi, He has breathed His breath on you and set you apart!
I want to encourage you with this passage in Deuteronomy 26:17-19: You have declared this day that the Lord is your God and that you will walk in His ways and that you will keep His decrees, commands and laws and that you will obey Him. And the Lord has declared this day that you are His daughter, His Treasured Possession, as He promised. He has declared that He will set you in praise, fame, and honour high above the nations He has made and that you will be a daughter holy to the Lord your God, as He promised.
It is so incredible to know and see how she has chosen to walk in this faith, and how her confidence has grown over the years. There is nothing more wonderful than seeing your child make that decision!
After the baptisms, we walked over and had a big church BBQ at the picnic shelter, which of course, my Hunny was cooking for on the bbq we lend out. (not that we had a lot of shelter from the sun, it was so hot!) The whole family sat together...we had my parents, my mother in law and her boyfriend, my sister and her family, my sister in law and her family, even grandma T came out! It was so wonderful to have them be witnesses and to celebrate Abi!
It was a perfectly hot day! The kids played at the park and the waterpark for a bit. (although I didn't think of swimsuits or towels for the Youngers. I let them get wet anyways and ride home in their damp underwear!)
The Fuel group (gr 5 and 6) decided to test the laws of physics in that if you put enough rubber bands around a watermelon, will it will explode?
It does! Into many pieces! It splatted on Kai's face, but he was rewarded with a huge chunk to eat afterwards! The Fuel boys thought it was pretty cool! (my Hunny leads that group, and since he grew up in the Boy Scouts he comes up with some funny, and different, projects for them to do!)
For a hot summery morning, it was a great Fall Kick Off event for our church!
The day was perfect and I am so happy to be able to share this day with family and friends. We are so blessed with this girl!
Abi mentioned in her testimony that this song has touched her. It is by the band Gungor, called Late Have I Loved You and comes from Augustine Confessions X.27. It is so beautiful and I have been known to play it really loud in the van while driving by myself! Hear it below.
***Thank-you also for friends and family and JRCC who let me use their photos of the event as well. Theirs are the bright and beautiful ones. I really really need to get a new camera...or learn how to take beautiful shots on my old falling apart one!!!
This morning was our Fall Kick Off at our church, Jericho Ridge, and we celebrated with a baby dedication, two baptisms and a bbq. It was awesome. The sun was blazing; it is was just a perfect day to share it with family and friends.
To top it off, my own Abi-girl shared a brief testimony at the end of the service, and then we went outside for a baptism. She spoke so clearly and confidently and I was so proud of her. She wasn't too sure what to say, or what words were the best, or how to explain something that she feels, but it came out great! Everyone's story is personal and none is ever wrong. (even if some of us feel it has to contain certain elements to be a proper testimony. I had to stop myself from adding information or pieces to her story as she worked on it, and kept reminding myself to encourage her to say the truth from the heart.) The power is in Him, and every "proper" testimony just needs to point back to who HE is to us and what HE has done. And she is able to share that.
She talked about how she grew up in a Christian home and school, attending church and hearing the stories of God and Jesus so much so that He became some sort of "celebrity" to her! That sounds different to me, to put it in those terms, but it makes sense in a world where people are elevated to celebrity status, and are "idols" and "liked" and where the goal of many youth today are to become that recognized as well. To say that Jesus became a "celebrity" would be to admit that He became someone to be looked up to, to be recognized, to be followed. A hero. And if she chooses Him to be the celebrity she looks up to, how wonderful!
She mentioned how she was wondering about His purpose for her life, and what direction to go in and feeling lost when she had an asthma attack a few years ago so severe that we needed to call 9-1-1 and where she stopped breathing. It was after she was healed that she knew that God must have a plan for her life!
(with Pastor Brad, our Lead Pastor and Pastor Mike, our Youth Pastor, while Justin gives his testimony)
After the service, we all filed outside to watch the two youth get baptized. (after we picked up our kids from the Kids at the Ridge, which is our Sunday School program. I was worried I'd be late to the baptism in having to go upstairs for the Youngers and then downstairs for B and then outside, but it worked out good! We made it in time!)
(I love that dimple!)
I was good listening to her testimony and didn't shed any tears, but listened in awe as she shared her story. It was after she came up out of that water that I cried. But that's okay. They were happy tears. It's good to cry at things like these!
My heart is so happy, so overwhelmed, so full of joy that she has chosen to be baptized and to set herself apart publicly.
(I love her smile in this one. She looks so peaceful as she is ready to go under.)
I didn't get to affirm Abi publicly, but I did share this with her in a letter:
You have mentioned how you have been awed at the thought of God breathing life into dust to create man, and how the song "Late have I loved you" by Gungor has meant a lot to you. In 2 Corinthians 2:15, it says that "we are to God the aroma of Christ." Abi, He has breathed His breath on you and set you apart!
I want to encourage you with this passage in Deuteronomy 26:17-19: You have declared this day that the Lord is your God and that you will walk in His ways and that you will keep His decrees, commands and laws and that you will obey Him. And the Lord has declared this day that you are His daughter, His Treasured Possession, as He promised. He has declared that He will set you in praise, fame, and honour high above the nations He has made and that you will be a daughter holy to the Lord your God, as He promised.
It is so incredible to know and see how she has chosen to walk in this faith, and how her confidence has grown over the years. There is nothing more wonderful than seeing your child make that decision!
After the baptisms, we walked over and had a big church BBQ at the picnic shelter, which of course, my Hunny was cooking for on the bbq we lend out. (not that we had a lot of shelter from the sun, it was so hot!) The whole family sat together...we had my parents, my mother in law and her boyfriend, my sister and her family, my sister in law and her family, even grandma T came out! It was so wonderful to have them be witnesses and to celebrate Abi!
(Rhys looking so dapper in his bow tie!)
It was a perfectly hot day! The kids played at the park and the waterpark for a bit. (although I didn't think of swimsuits or towels for the Youngers. I let them get wet anyways and ride home in their damp underwear!)
The Fuel group (gr 5 and 6) decided to test the laws of physics in that if you put enough rubber bands around a watermelon, will it will explode?
It does! Into many pieces! It splatted on Kai's face, but he was rewarded with a huge chunk to eat afterwards! The Fuel boys thought it was pretty cool! (my Hunny leads that group, and since he grew up in the Boy Scouts he comes up with some funny, and different, projects for them to do!)
For a hot summery morning, it was a great Fall Kick Off event for our church!
The day was perfect and I am so happy to be able to share this day with family and friends. We are so blessed with this girl!
Abi mentioned in her testimony that this song has touched her. It is by the band Gungor, called Late Have I Loved You and comes from Augustine Confessions X.27. It is so beautiful and I have been known to play it really loud in the van while driving by myself! Hear it below.
***Thank-you also for friends and family and JRCC who let me use their photos of the event as well. Theirs are the bright and beautiful ones. I really really need to get a new camera...or learn how to take beautiful shots on my old falling apart one!!!
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Welcome to Thankful Thursday, a weekly feature that came about because I started to copy Louise at Talk Nerdy To Me! There are so many things to be thankful for. Take a look at my list, then check out Louise's, and then write your own! It is so good for the soul to be able to look back over the week and count the things that are wonderful and things you can be thankful for.
1. Kindergarten
Yep, definitely the biggest thing to happen this week! I am so excited!!!
2. buzzed cuts
I took R to get his hair cut before he started school and he had the giggles when the hairdresser used the clippers on his head, saying it was tickly!
I am thankful for his giggles. Giggles make everything better.
I am thankful that he doesn't look shaggy anymore! He looks so sweet!
3. Friends close by
We are lucky in that we have neighbours on either side of us with kids in the same age group and that the kids all play together (relatively) well. Josh is the boy that lives to our left and he is a year younger than B, and so he is often over here wanting to play with him. It is a great friendship! The nice thing is that B gets invited out to many activities with Josh and his family. (they have a little girl who is younger than Eden as well)
On the weekend, B got to go to the skate park for a bit, which is within walking distance to our house. Josh is also a very active boy and so I totally get it with keeping the boys occupied with friends!
I am thankful for neighbourhood friends to play with!
4.Helpers
We had a bunch of last-minute scrambling to do this weekend to prepare for Kai and his Dad for the school camping trip, which included preparing the BBQ. (we let the school borrow ours since it is so huge. It makes cooking for 80 kids easier than borrowing multiple small BBQ!) We had to enlist the kids in a few of the tasks just to get things moving along smoothly. I'll be honest that it is not easy getting them to cooperate or even help in a timely manner and do it without grumbling, but *sigh* I hear that is common with others too, so I try not to take it personal.
I am thankful for Abi in helping clean the BBQ; it was a dirty job!
I don't know many people who use a pressure washer to clean their BBQ--how about you? (it was that yucky from camping and family get togethers this summer!)
5. Old Friends
I bumped into an old friend this week. Not literally though, that would've been interesting. After we dropped off the boys for their camping trip (#4 & #6) early Tuesday morning, I took the kids to Timmys for breakfast(yum, so healthy!, when one of Abi's classmates came in. We waved and the mother looked at me and asked if she knew me. I shrugged it off and explained that our girls were in class together. She looked maybe a bit familiar, but nothing struck me. After they paid and were sitting down, she introduced herself and asked if she had my maiden name correct, and that's when I remembered who she was! Perky! (as she was known, since her last name was Perkins. She was energetic! She and I got along well in highschool, even though she was my sister's friend) So neat! She has three kids (gr 8, gr 6 and gr 5) and they just started at our school. How wonderful! I had to give her a hug. I love seeing old friends.
6. Overnight School trips and a quieter home
My husband and Kai left on Tuesday morning from the school to head to Newcastle Island for the Grade Six camping trip. It's a "welcome to middle school, get to know your classmates and teachers, team building" type of trip. (my Hunny got to go on the trip when Abi was in gr. 6 as well. He helped lead a group of three girls in various lessons. This year he went as a cook!)
Without them, our house has been a bit quieter. (I find it harder to sleep; the bed seems so big and cold and empty!) But it hasn't been too bad. I went out for a Meet The Teacher night at the elementary school the first night, then attempted to put the kids to bed early the second night so that I could watch a movie (didn't work). We managed without the boys! But I am so thankful that they come back home tonight! I can't wait to hear all about the trip and the funny things that happened. (Abi still remembers her trip; we'll see how talkative Kai is!)
7. Lego Creations
My kids are LEGO fanatics! It started with Kai and it trickled down and now all of the kids can easily spend a day playing with Lego...or doing something Lego-related (such as the website and the videos and games, and the huge Lego movie where "everything is awesome!")
Bryn made this creation while at Grandma Lynn's house this week:
A Flower Scarecrow.
He asked me to post it to the Lego site, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. (honestly, I haven't looked into it yet. *blush* I should go do that now...)
8. Great Conversations
I have had some great conversations lately, mostly about the Teacher's Strike that is still ongoing here in BC. It is a touchy subject for many and it is hard to be able to speak your mind without offending someone. So I am thankful for the many conversations that I've had this week that have helped me shape my thoughts, have educated me, and have proven to me that adults can talk about tough subjects, have differing opinions and still get along! (well, for the most part. I have an thread on FB that sometimes sounds more touchy than it needs to be. Typing can be so tough as it can be misread so easily. *sigh*)
9. This silly girl
I will be honest, I was worried about having Eden at home, just her and I. She has had her older siblings to entertain her all these three years, and now without them what will we do? But I am so thankful that this week has been so good. She is full of energy and likes to watch her shows (Dora, Diego, Yo Gabba Gabba and Team Umizumi...thanks to Netflix) and colour pictures and read books and have baths. It has been great!
I had to get her a "lunch kit" since the others had one, of course. I luckily found this one at Dollarama for only $2.50, which I thought was affordable for something not necessary! She loves it and has to carry it everywhere, and yes, I have to fill it with snacks every day too! (she is shirtless because as soon as we come home, she has to remove her shoes, socks and shirt. I don't get the shirt, but it's always been this way!)
10. BSF
This morning, the Bible study I attended last year started up again. Hooray! I am so incredibly thankful that I am able to go and study the Word with other women, and that Eden loves going to the children's class. It really helped me in my faith and understanding last year.
This year we are studying Moses, which should be interesting. I wasn't too sure about what I would take from this study (as opposed to last year when we studied the book of Matthew) but I left this morning full of excitement and anticipation for what I will learn. If you are free on Thursday mornings and live in the area, check out Bible Study Fellowship, (a inter-denominational Bible study group, see their website by clicking on their name). We meet at Cloverdale Baptist Church at 9:15am. If you aren't able to attend during the day, they are starting up an evening meeting this month. And if you aren't local, check out the BSF site as there are other locations. I have loved being able to attend and I am so excited to see what God will do this year!
So many little blessings this week. Looking back over your week, what are you thankful for?
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